Britain sends warships to Gibraltar over border conflict with Spain

The Gibraltar enclave, a British territory, 2.62 square miles at the tip of Spain (Spiegel)

It's for a previously scheduled naval exercise in the Mediterranean,
but Britain's dispatch of warships to the coast of Gibraltar couldn't
have happened at a more significant time. Gibraltar is located on the
tip of Spain, but it's British territory, thanks to the 1714 Treaty at
Utrecht that settled the War of the Spanish Succession. Since then,
it's been the source of unending tension between Britain and Spain,
but tensions really soared last month when Gibraltar created dumped
cement blocks into the waters around the enclave, in order to prevent
Spanish boats from fishing there. This infuriated Spanish officials,
who retaliated by partially blocking the border checkpoint between
Spain and Gibraltar, making it almost impossible for people to travel
there from Spain, with some officials calling for a return of the
"Spanish Armada" to Gibraltar. Britain is now retaliating back by
threatening legal action, saying that the border controls are a
violation of European Union rules. The Spanish Armada and the British
warships are a show of force, but we don't believe that this will turn
into a shooting war.

Spain has announced that it's going to team up with Argentina, and
take the case to the United Nations, where they'll demand that
Gibraltar be returned to Spain, and that the Falkland Islands be
returned to Argentina. Gibraltar Chronicle and Spiegel

You can enumerate just a few "world wars" that affected all of western
Europe in the last few centuries. There was the Spanish Armada war
against Britain that climaxed with Spain's defeat in 1588, and then
the Thirty Years War that climaxed in 1648 with the Treaty at
Westphalia (called the "Peace of Exhaustion"), settling the boundaries
between European countries.

The War of the Spanish Succession broke out 52 years after the treaty
at Westphalia was signed. It was triggered when the King of Spain
died childless in 1700, and because of numerous marriage alliances, it
finally turned out that Spain was bequeathed to the grandson of the
King of France, who then became King of Spain, and so Spain became
allied with France, where previously it had been allied with Germany.
This led to the WSS "world war," with the two sides led by England and
France. England miraculously and unexpectedly defeated the French
army in the Battle of Blenheim in 1704. France's final defeat came in
August 1709, at the battle of Malplaquet, the bloodiest battle in
Europe for the entire eighteenth century.

Once again, the boundaries of the European countries were set by
agreement, this time by the Treaty at Utrecht in 1714, and one of the
spoils of war was Britain's acquisition of Gibraltar from Spain. The
treaty held until the next "world war," Napoleon's conquest of Europe
following the French Revolution, almost a century later. But the
agreements coming out of the War of the Spanish Succession that made
both Scotland and Gibraltar part of Britain are both still being
disputed today.

Your mortgage documents are fake!

Thanks to information from a newly unsealed lawsuit, it turns out that
many people reading this articles have mortgages with banks that can't
prove ownership of your property. We haven't written about
"robo-signing" for a couple of years, but it now turns out that the
reason that robo-signing was used was because the banks wanting to
foreclose properties could not prove they had the right to foreclose,
and so they used robo-signing to forge fraudulent documents, and then
lied to the courts and government about them.

Tens of millions of home mortgages worth trillions of dollars have no
legitimate underlying owner that can establish the right to
foreclose. This hasnít stopped banks from foreclosing anyway with
false documents, and they are often successful, a testament to the
breakdown of law in the judicial system. Homeowners trying to sell
their properties find that their properties are impossible to sell.

Banks who committed this fraud include: JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo,
Citigroup, Bank of America, HSBC, the Bank of New York Mellon,
Deutsche Bank and US Bank.

As usual, the Obama administration adamantly refuses to investigate
and prosecute these crimes, because these banks are all big donors to
Administration campaigns and programs, with the result that no one has
gone to jail for trillions of dollars of criminal fraud that caused
the financial crisis. The level of criminality going on in Washington
is incredible, and nobody gives a shit. That's why I keep referring
to Hannah Arendt and Nazi Germany, where respectable people were
actually gangsters, and gangsters were treated as respectable people.
Salon

Egypt backs down on 'dispersal' of pro-Morsi supporters

How do you 'disperse' tens of thousands of protesters in a sit-in?

Egypt's interim government backed down on plans to "disperse" tens of
thousands of protesters in a sit-in in two large squares in Cairo.
The protesters are demanding that ousted president Mohamed Morsi, who
has been held in detention at a secret location since July 3, be
released and restored to the presidency, and that his Muslim
Brotherhood government be restored to power. No reason was given for
backing down, but various conjectures have been put forth: the
U.S. pressured them to stand down; or it's a strategy to confuse the
protesters; or the "dispersal" will occur later when the element of
surprise is available; or some people hope that negotiations are still
possible; or some people fear that the violence will end up killing
hundreds of people. Al-Ahram (Cairo) and Foreign Policy